Adventures in Realism

Adventures in Realism offers an accessible introduction to
realism as it has evolved since the 19th century. Though focused on
literature and literary theory, the significance of technology and
the visual arts is also addressed.

Comprises 16 newly-commissioned essays written by a
distinguished group of contributors, including Slavoj Zizek and
Frederic Jameson

Matthew Beaumont is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Department of English at University College, London. He is the author of Utopia Ltd.: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England1870-1900 (2005), and has edited Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward for Oxford World’s Classics.

"Adventures in Realism is an exciting and necessary book. It
collects together a stunning array of essays that, both
individually and as a whole, show why we need to consider the
nature and importance of realism. The volume encourages us to think
through the concept both in relation to its mid-nineteenth century
origins, and today’s philosophical discussions; to see it
both as manifested in specific literary or artistic forms and as a
more abstract way of figuring our place within the material world.
Matthew Beaumont should be congratulated in placing his
contributors into such effective dialogue with one another: in
doing so, he has returned realism to the center of historical,
aesthetic, and political debate." Kate Flint, Rutgers University

"Every new generation of critics and scholars must come to terms
in its own ways with the paradoxes of realism. Realism is a period
style, but at the same time it is a perennial motive in literature,
art, film, and other media. Realism purports to represent things as
they are, or were, but at the same time it is a constitutive set of
conventions that tells people in a given time and place what is to
be taken as real. This distinguished collection of essays
brilliantly articulates these paradoxes for our own time."J.Hillis Miller, University of California at Irvine

"What a wonderfully wide and deep and pushing inspection of
realisms (and irrealisms) in history, in theory, in practice.
Here’s realism, then and now, cannily philosophized,
politicized, feminized, psychologized. Here are so many of
realism’s practitioners, its aesthetic friends and enemies,
the missionaries and also the scoffers, being heard and watched as
they engage with their chosen media – novels, plays,
paintings, photographs, films, buildings. It is, I think, as
serious, engaging, educating a look at the large realist project as
could well be assembled."Valentine Cunningham, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

"Adventures in Realism is an exciting and necessary book. It
collects together a stunning array of essays that, both
individually and as a whole, show why we need to consider the
nature and importance of realism. The volume encourages us to think
through the concept both in relation to its mid-nineteenth century
origins, and today’s philosophical discussions; to see it
both as manifested in specific literary or artistic forms and as a
more abstract way of figuring our place within the material world.
Matthew Beaumont should be congratulated in placing his
contributors into such effective dialogue with one another: in
doing so, he has returned realism to the center of historical,
aesthetic, and political debate." Kate Flint, Rutgers University

"Every new generation of critics and scholars must come to terms
in its own ways with the paradoxes of realism. Realism is a period
style, but at the same time it is a perennial motive in literature,
art, film, and other media. Realism purports to represent things as
they are, or were, but at the same time it is a constitutive set of
conventions that tells people in a given time and place what is to
be taken as real. This distinguished collection of essays
brilliantly articulates these paradoxes for our own time."J.Hillis Miller, University of California at Irvine

"What a wonderfully wide and deep and pushing inspection of
realisms (and irrealisms) in history, in theory, in practice.
Here’s realism, then and now, cannily philosophized,
politicized, feminized, psychologized. Here are so many of
realism’s practitioners, its aesthetic friends and enemies,
the missionaries and also the scoffers, being heard and watched as
they engage with their chosen media – novels, plays,
paintings, photographs, films, buildings. It is, I think, as
serious, engaging, educating a look at the large realist project as
could well be assembled."Valentine Cunningham, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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